Trick or Treat: How to transform your home into a creepy affair this Halloween
A time to get your home into an intentional mess, Halloween is upon us. Though it might seem easy to throw a few carved pumpkins on the porch or in the front yard and call it a day, there is so much more you can do that will send the trick-or-treaters squealing with a mixture of spine-tingling horror and delight.
Here are a few ways that you can transform your home into the best Halloween attraction on the block this spooky Monday.
The Yard
As the young ones in their costumes go down the block in their search for sugary treats, the first thing that they will see will be your front lawn before they approach the house. You should, therefore, make your lawn stand out from the rest of the homes.
A classic for the lawn would be to transform it into a haunted graveyard. Let the brown and orange autumn leaves fall for the whole of the week prior to Halloween without being raked away. This is sure to give your yard that deserted feel to it.
No graveyard deserves the name without the tombs. Set up a number of tombstones on the yard, focusing on their degenerating nature. To do this, make sure that the tombstones are in a haphazard arrangement, with some skewed and others crumbling, lending your yard an atmosphere that beings from beyond have taken over.
If you have trees in the yard, hang a few fake spider webs to really bring out the spook. If you want to heighten this feeling for the onlookers, throw in a few skulls and bones for effect.
Cheesecloth ghosts, as well as those made from chicken wire, are great for the yard on Halloween. Their creepy effect is most perceptible at night, where they are not totally visible but a slight breeze, changing their appearance, is sure to elicit squeals of terror.
The Porch, Front Door and Windows
A classic front porch decoration for Halloween is the carved pumpkin. Take your time to carve out ghoulish designs in the pumpkins. Addition of flickering flame candles in the pumpkin will really spook those who approach your house when the sun has gone down.
A grim reaper waiting on the porch will send imaginations wandering down a path of gruesome darkness, creating fear in visitors as they climb up those steps to the front door. Torn cheesecloth and more fake spider webs over the front door will add to the mystery surrounding the whole setup.
To make trick-or-treaters think twice before knocking on the door, set up creepy wreaths on the door. You can use bunches of grapes hand painted to look like gouged eyeballs, nothing gets creepier than this.
You can also place cardboard cutouts in the windows. Cut the cardboards into shapes of scary images like black cats, monsters or decapitated individuals.
The Interior
When you open your door to the cute kids in their costumes, nothing should give them quite a fright like the big spider that will be hanging from the ceiling of the entranceway, spinning its large web.
You should also keep this area dark, with a few lights giving off hues of deep red. A smoke machine wouldn’t hurt either. Visitors will be spellbound by the smoke rolling out of the dim red light when the front door is opened.
To further bring out that dark and chilling atmosphere in the interior, set up mannequins and dolls in the living room, with some limbs missing and preferably dressed in rags, with that blank look on their faces.
Lining the mantel with skulls and cultural totems really brings out the spirit of Halloween, which might even make you scared of relaxing in your own home. Dim lights will enhance the entire macabre ambience of your home.
With all this in place, it’s high time you got into your costume and got your bag of sweets ready because that door bell will ring any time now, smiling gap-toothed trick-or-treaters on the other side waiting to be amazed.